The San Francisco 49ers have 9.6 million reasons to favor Blaine Gabbert over Colin Kaepernick as their starting quarterback for 2016.
And that still might not be enough reasons for the 49ers to cut Kaepernick next month.
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While Gabbert appeared to have the better numbers than Kaepernick during 2016 in which they evenly divided the season as starting quarterback, a closer look reveals Gabbert's play to be artificially inflated, according to the Santa Rosa Press-Democrat's Grant Cohn.
"A quick glance at Gabbert's stats, and you might think he played well last season," Cohn revealed. "Gabbert passed for 253.9 passing yards per game, which is slightly above the league average, and he completed 63.1 percent of his throws -- also slightly above the league average. Gabbert posted these numbers on a bad team. Impressive, right?
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"... These numbers are merely surface stats. Drill deeper and you'll see Gabbert padded his numbers with 'failed completions,' a concept invented by Football Outsiders. What are failed completions? Football Outsiders defines them as 'complete passes that fail to gain 45 percent of needed yards on first down; 60 percent on second down; or 100 percent on third or fourth down.'
"Gabbert is the king of failed completions. He built his entire career on them. He completes short pass after short pass simply for the sake of completing them, not for sake of picking up first downs."
Cohn went on to accuse Gabbert of playing scared on third down by dumping "the ball to a running back as soon as humanly possible."
On third downs, Gabbert threw passes that averaged 2.1 yards short of the first-down marker, Cohn added. By way of comparison, Steelers quarterback Ben Roethlisberger threw an average of 6.8 yards past the first-down marker.
Even Kaepernick threw 0.7 yards past the marker last season.
It's a big part of the reason Gabbert has a career record of 8-27 as a starter while Kaepernick is 27-20.
It's possible that the 49ers cut Kaepernick and try to sign another free-agent quarterback. Sam Bradford could leave the Eagles for a reunion with coach Chip Kelly in San Francisco, but he's sure to cost more than Kaepernick.
Another Kelly protégé, Rams quarterback Nick Foles, fell out of favor last season and also is a possibility. There's also the Broncos' Brock Osweiler and the Redskins' Robert Griffin III that loom as free agents, but Kaepernick is the only one of the bunch that has gone to a Super Bowl.
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